GTA IV Performance sucks on decent PC?

[GodlessAstronomer]

I get 64fps on the benchmark no matter what my settings are, it's bullshit and doesn't reflect in-game performance.

 

[Modular]

It's funny, after reading this thread I started playing the game alot more. I'm about 4 hours in and having a blast. I'm running FRAPS in the background to monitor FPS, and I'm usually at 35-50 depending on the scene. I don't know what all my settings are at exactly, but they're relatively high, and I have 2x AA forced via the control panel.

 

[GodlessAstronomer]

Oh yeah I guess I should post my follow up too. After bumping the view distances down to ~20 and turning shadows off the game runs perfectly smooth and looks OK, but it's obviously not well optimized because I have several games that look much, much nicer and run substantially faster. It's still an incredibly fun game though

 

[Raduque]

Yeah thats you though, theres people who think company of heros is playable at 5fps online, i know because they join my frickin game half the time and bring it to a crawl. For a decent frame rate GTA IV needs a quad.

For once, I agree with Maxi here. I used to think 20-25fps was perfectly playable till I built an actually fast computer.

 

[reallyscrued]

New meme...

Yeah but....can it run GTA?

 

[Cheeseplug]

I was afraid it wasn't going to run well for me, but with a phenom quad, 4850 and 6 gigs of RAM it runs really smooth for me. Everything at where it autodetected, except view distance at 38. I went in with the mindset that even the autodetect was still way better than the console versions, and so far it hasn't gotten to me.

 

[CountZero]

Yeah thats you though, theres people who think company of heros is playable at 5fps online, i know because they join my frickin game half the time and bring it to a crawl. For a decent frame rate GTA IV needs a quad.

It does not *need* a quad for a decent frame rate. If anything video memory is maybe a bigger indicator of performance. Going from a 8800 320 to a GTX285 1GB was a difference between unplayable unless I turn everything down to buttery smooth at 1920x1200 and that is on a dual core.

The other thing to remember is that not only is it not well optimized but the settings that are equivalent to the consoles on the various distance/density sliders are in the 20s. So firing it up and setting everything to 50 or higher is pretty taxing.

 

[MStele]

It does not *need* a quad for a decent frame rate. If anything video memory is maybe a bigger indicator of performance. Going from a 8800 320 to a GTX285 1GB was a difference between unplayable unless I turn everything down to buttery smooth at 1920x1200 and that is on a dual core.

The other thing to remember is that not only is it not well optimized but the settings that are equivalent to the consoles on the various distance/density sliders are in the 20s. So firing it up and setting everything to 50 or higher is pretty taxing.

Agreed. Another aspect people tend to look past is the sheer number of objects the engine has the render. There is alot going on within the render radius...far more than your average FPS. One of the the big problems I had with GTAIV on both the PS3 and 360 was that they abused mip mapping to compensation for drops in frame rates. If you pay attention you'll notice many of the textures in cutscenes as well as during gameplay never sharpen up. They just stay blurry. Same with mass effect. They made the higher res textures load last in order to preserve frame rates. The PC version of GTAIV doesn't have this problem near as bad, although it still happens here and there. Like someone said before, its bad optimization on the part of the developer. At least on the PC version I can drive around without feeling nearsighted all the time from all the blurry textures in the distance.

 

[toyota]

I bought this off the steam sale but haven't had a chance to play it. After reading this, though, I did want to see how it would perform on my machine. I've got a gtx260 216 OC, an e8400 c2d @ 4.1 ghz, and with all settings high, texture filter quality very high, shadows off, and all numbered settings at default I averaged 60 fps in the benchmark utility. The game showed me using about 820/896 mb of video memory.

at what res? I just tried similar settings at 1680x1050 and could not even hit 60fps much less average it. I only got 48fps and my E8500 is at 3.8 and gtx260 at 666/1392/2200 so are systems are very similar.

EDIT: nevermind I see your other post with more details. I sure as hell cannot get that with those settings.

I ran it again and tried to match your settings and only got 43.70. how in the hell are you getting 17fps more with nearly identical specs?

Statistics
Average FPS: 43.70
Duration: 37.10 sec
CPU Usage: 98%
System memory usage: 72%
Video memory usage: 91%

Graphics Settings
Video Mode: 1680 x 1050 (60 Hz)
Texture Quality: High
Texture Filter Quality: Highest
View Distance: 31
Detail Distance: 51

Hardware
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Microsoft Windows 7 Professional
Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260
Video Driver version: 191.07
Audio Adapter: Speakers (Creative SB X-Fi)
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU E8500 @ 3.16GHz

File ID: Benchmark.cli

 

[toyota]

It does not *need* a quad for a decent frame rate. If anything video memory is maybe a bigger indicator of performance. Going from a 8800 320 to a GTX285 1GB was a difference between unplayable unless I turn everything down to buttery smooth at 1920x1200 and that is on a dual core.

The other thing to remember is that not only is it not well optimized but the settings that are equivalent to the consoles on the various distance/density sliders are in the 20s. So firing it up and setting everything to 50 or higher is pretty taxing.

you went from a relatively shitty card with very low memory to a more modern card that is capable of handling newer games. so in your case you were initially extremely gpu limited but GTA 4 most certainly needs a decent quad core to keep the framerate up. I also doubt GTA 4 is buttery smooth on your unnamed dual core cpu. http://www.pcgameshardware.com/aid,...ead-of-Core-2-Quad-in-CPU-benchmarks/Reviews/

 

[zerocool84]

All you guys saying that it runs buttery smooth on your slow dual core or slow video card are obviously not running with everything turned up. Fact of the matter is that we're PC gamers and we buy expensive hardware to be able to run games with everything on and this game is horribly ported and to be able to run everything turned up at a decent resolution, you need a quad and a video card with a lot of RAM.